The 'so what' is the part that the Waves ladies & gents are hypothesizing is the real answer to why good physical monitors in a good room make gauging translation of mixes to other systems easier. ( ) Can't move your head and hear a change. It, and plugs like it, can accurately place sound sources behind, above, beside you etc. WaveArts' Panorama plug is over 10 years old. Sure, you can't move your head virtually in relation to the surround speakers but, so what? You can't do that with virtual stereo monitoring either. There's no reason at all, for example, why fixed monitor sim plugs (where you can't move your head and hear any change) like CanOpener and Redline Monitor can't model surround: The sound will appear to come from behind you or hard left/right etc. For sure, NX is a neat way to mix in surround format when you have only headphones but if you take it as being primarily about that, then you risk missing most of what's special about this plug. I feel like there's a misunderstanding of this plugin that is exacerbated by Waves' abysmal ad campaign for it, which has consisted of a video 'teaser' with bro clones flying around in a laundromat like some sort of slacker tinkerbells (seriously - if you haven't checked it out yet: don't!), and vague explanatory videos with no sound examples. As well, it shows how clever the people at Waves are. I suppose with surround, there is a tendency to move your head in the direction of a sudden sound happening behind you, so maybe there is a reason to emulate what you hear if you do that. What is the point of tracking head movement? I assume it does make a change to what you hear - otherwise why track it? If I could get it to sound pretty much like the real thing, I'd be happy with it, no matter what ELSE it can do! And I'm pretty sure it'll do that much for me. If I were to buy NX, I'd merely use it to set up a decent L/R mix such that I hear both speakers with both ears, as with real monitors. It's not going to change what you hear when you move your head, is it? If so, I didn't see that demo. Why would I want to model and reintroduce something I try to avoid? One of the appeals about mixing on headphones for me is I don't have to worry about moving off axis from the sweet spot for the speakers.

I am used to staying in a certain spot when mixing. One of the biggest problems with mixing with speakers is that things sound different in different parts of the room. Babz wrote:I have Waves NX but don't see the appeal of the head-tracking part of it.

Waves nx tutorial